“Aren’t they cute?”
“I love it! It’ll be like having our own Disney movie every day!”
But, as “Colonel Kurtz” so aptly whispered in Apocalypse Now, “The horror. The horror.”
No, not alligators, not coyotes, not lions or warthogs or perky skunks. No, no, no, that would have been much too easy.
Ants. Texas Leaf Cutting Ants. Atta texana in entomological circles. Turns out they weren’t cute, and our life with them was nothing like a Disney movie. It was our own war and horror movie combo.
In 1999, my wife Meredith and I moved from our happy home of 21 years in a quiet neighborhood west of Houston to a beautiful country home 18 miles down the road. It was love at first sight. Big limestone pillars guarding the entrance to a long, curving driveway; a 25-year-old sprawling ranch-style house with a huge limestone fireplace; a swimming pool, our first; a barn with an apartment; century-old pecan trees scattered over almost ten acres of fertile Brazos river bottom soil. And, the devil’s spawn, Texas leaf-cutters.
The first time we saw them, we were indeed charmed. A long line of leaf-toting ants marched with military-like precision across our back patio, out into the St. Augustine grass, and into a carefully camouflaged hole in the ground. Ah, the food chain at work. Nature at its finest. All is right with the world.
Not so fast, newcomer. Food chain, check, and nature, maybe. As for all being right with the world, wrong.
Several weeks after we had made the move and were rightfully bragging that we were country folk, I poured myself a cup of coffee and walked out back to greet a July Saturday. Cardinals and Mockingbirds were hard at it, vying for the morning’s blue ribbon. In the pasture across Iron’s Creek, new-born calves were frisky and noisy. And silently, from the north end of the house, along the sidewalk, across the patio and into the yard, stretched a caravan of ants merrily at work, hauling fragments of what had formerly been shiny green leaves.
The unasked, and thus unanswered question I never considered when first I raved over the little beasties, “Where are you getting all those leaves?”, now dawned on me.
I followed the ant procession up the sidewalk to an old tree-sized ligustrum, where their trail came to an end. The bottom half of the ligustrum was lush and green and dotted with fragrant white blossoms. The top half was bare. Half-inch sized worker ants moved down the tree, off the stripped branches, and onto the remaining greenery, where they joined other workers hard at work cutting my leaves into tiny pieces. The fragments fell to the ground, and ants, ants, and more ants grabbed them and scampered off to join the long march.
How ya like that answer, city boy? You didn’t really think you were gonna move to the country and just take it easy, did you?
I had learned early on that mowing required five or six hours on my tractor. Old trees dropped old limbs, and bucking, then burning them, would sometimes span a couple of days. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be at war with A. texana for years.
Any time I ventured to plant rose bushes, the pillaging leaf-cutters weren’t far behind. They ravaged my Hibiscus and Bottlebrush plants. On cool evenings or while the household slept, they were hard after a large fig tree and a couple of mature Mandarin Orange trees. Distance never seemed to be a barrier. The ants tunneled around underground with great ease. Two Crepe Myrtle trees far from the house and numerous Red Bud trees scattered around the property were regularly under attack. The worker ants were hauling their bounty of leaf fragments from my trees and bushes to a chamber deep underground, where smaller ants would cut them into finer pieces and then pass them on to other even smaller ants to chew into a pulp. A fungus would then grow on the pulp and voila, assembled millions, breakfast, lunch, and dinner is served. I was hosting an army of relentless, barbarous fungus epicureans!
Homo sapiens versus Atta texana. My side surely had the upper hand. Moon landings. Heart transplants. The accrued knowledge of mankind lurking behind multiple search engines, just waiting for me to enter, “the unabridged list of any and everything the beleaguered can do to eliminate, exterminate, eradicate, annihilate, terminate, kill, wipe out, abolish, and do away with Texas Leaf Cutting Ants.”
In a vain attempt to live up to my wise man ancestry, I flexed and reached for…a water hose. A suitable proxy of mankind ready for battle, I would show them. But, I did not show them anything. Water proved to be a pitiful weapon. A jet spray from my hose-end nozzle washed some, but not all, of the marauders from their flora of choice and only briefly put a halt to their great trek back to the hole in the ground. I tried shoving the end of the hose down a couple of inches into their entrance and opening the tap full bore for several hours to just drown the whole lot. Wait, wait, was that ant laughter I heard? Was I simply an annoyance? My inner Mr. Hyde awakened and urged me to boil water, lots of it, and pour it slowly, gleefully, satisfyingly down the hole. The torrent of scalding water slowed the work of the leaf cutters but, sadly, never for more than a couple of days. Advantage A. texana.
Well, God bless search engines. They devoured my plaintive pleas and pointed me to Volcano, an ant bait made up of orange peel pulp and a pesticide. It had been very effective in controlling Texas Leaf Cutting Ants in East Texas pine forests. I ordered. I received. I spread. They carried. They disappeared. Advantage H. sapiens. That is, advantage until almost three years later, when my supplier of Volcano informed me that the EPA had banned it, and even if he had some, he was no longer authorized to sell it. I’m guessing the leaf cutters either eavesdropped on that phone call, or they got on my computer and researched and read the government directive on Volcano, because, mystery of mysteries, in no time at all they were back at work.
And back with a vengeance. A privet that had been growing at the front of the house for years was stripped overnight. A Rose of Sharon planted during those peacetime years suffered the same fate. And now, freshly opened entrances to their underground lair were present in every flower bed. Antdom had come up with a new tactic. No more cute, above-ground conga lines that stretched out for thirty or more feet. Their new maneuver had the leaf cutters simply popping out of the ground under their chosen target, scurrying up into the leafage to do their dirty work, and then raining down the harvest to the workers waiting below. Just a few left, left, lefts, and right, right, rights and the ants were down the new hole with their plunder. Simple. Effective. Advantage A. texana.
It’s a tough chew for a man to go to bed at night, having been thwarted at the hands, all six of them, of ants. Ah, but what fertile ground weary slumber offers for dreams of schemes and dark things.
With a coil of garden hose resting on my lap, I drove my old riding lawnmower out of the garage and headed for the injured Rose of Sharon. I parked the mower, turned off the ignition, dismounted, and with wicked intent, fastened one end of the hose to the muffler and headed for the leaf cutter hole with the other end in hand. I jammed the hose down into their hole and headed back to the lawnmower. I started the engine and throttled it up, and while it ran and carbon mono was making its way through the tunnels of the leaf cutter domain, I made my way around the house and pushed a stick or a rock into every leaf cutter hole I could find to block any escape. No mercy. Did I mention dark things? I figured half-an-hour was ample time for the CO to do its job, so I shut off the engine and restored the old lawnmower to its intended purpose. What a great day. As I remember it, there may have even been a bruise on my back from patting myself so frequently there.
Cup of coffee in hand, I walked out the next morning to examine the plugged holes and revel in the wrath I had visited upon A. texana. What I discovered was a freshly opened hole next to each hole I had plugged and leaf cutter ants playfully milling around. It was clear to me now that my foes not only knew how to tap a phone or read governmentese, they could also hold their breath for thirty minutes. I needed bigger, better.
I started my old F150 and pulled around to the front flowerbed to begin my next aggression. The plan was familiar. The hose was back in the new hole near the Rose of Sharon, all the other new holes were once again plugged, my sweet Ford was running smoothly, and I was headed inside the house to kill some time and catch up on the news of the day. Two hours later I walked outside to find the hose mostly collapsed and my truck no longer running. It would have been so simple, perhaps even so sane, to wave the white flag at that point and admit defeat, but H. sapiens has never gone down easily.
Some months after rebounding from my fumigation humiliation, Meredith and I were enjoying a long weekend at a state historical site in south central Texas. We made a side trip one afternoon to a plant nursery that had been around for years in a nearby town. We chanced to run into, and struck up a conversation with, a sweet, little old white-haired lady who was the owner. During the course of our chat the subject got around to pests and, in particular, the Texas Leaf-Cutting Ant. She crooked her finger and motioned for us to follow her into a back room, where she pulled a white plastic container off a shelf and held it up for our inspection.
“Orthene”, she whispered.
“Put a cupful of Grape Nuts in a gallon plastic storage bag, throw in a tablespoon of this, shake it up, sprinkle it with a little water, zip it up, throw it under your sink, and forget about it for two weeks. When you pull it out, you’ll see mold growing on the Grape Nuts. Just sprinkle it around their holes, and the workers will take it down. It won’t be long before it contaminates their food supply.”
She grinned and giggled, “And the queen will die. And the colony will die. But don’t tell anybody I told you.”
Of course, I tried it as soon as we got back home. With minimal success. Orthene dust drifting around inside our house was not a good idea, so the process had to be done outside on a still day. Even then, some of the dust made its way into the air and onto my hands. I eventually discerned my good health should supersede this method of diminishing A. texana. Advantage to the ant.
So, I turned to exotica. In particular, the Red Dragon 100,000 BTU Weed Dragon propane torch. Sweet, sweet, sweet. I figured if I couldn’t eliminate, exterminate, eradicate, annihilate, terminate, kill, wipe out, abolish, or do away with my sworn enemies, I would just sadistically rain fire down on them from above. There was great pleasure in turning on the propane, sparking it, and then squeezing the power grip to bring a foot-long blue flame roaring to life. I vaporized all leaf cutter ants I saw moving around above ground. I blew fire and intense heat down every ant hole I could find. I interrupted the rhythm of their daily life, and I got boundless pleasure from it, even though my efforts were only temporary. You interrupt my life. I interrupt your life. Me man. You ant. Advantage me.
Whenever I found evidence of leaf cutter activity somewhere out on the property away from the house, I employed another disruptive tactic. I got my little blue tractor out of the barn and drove it up over their holes, locked the brakes, put it in gear, revved up the engine and just shook the ground for several minutes. Up came the leaf cutters, large, small, and tiny, running for their little lives. I could only fantasize about what was going on deep in the ground beneath my tractor and me, but the scenarios were so satisfying. Oh, so satisfying. Score yet one more for H. sapiens.
The last few years of our life in the country had me playing a variation on a theme. The old nursery lady’s whispered advice from years before was sound. I just tweaked it. On still days, I would work my way around our house, alternately spraying a bush or ornamental with water, then dusting it with her secret powder. The leaves dried with a coating that was unpalatable to the leaf cutters, and they stayed away. Take that.
In the end, I think maybe our war was a stalemate. There were many battles out in the country along River Road. As a member in good standing of the human race, I never countenanced defeat. Nor did the ants.
Take a few minutes sometime and enter Texas Leaf Cutting Ant into your favorite search engine. The results will run the gamut, from hatred and disdain to fascination and praise.
A begrudging nod to you, Atta texana.